


Hear/t

by DiscontentedWinter, Michicant123



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Art, Deaf Character, Deputy Derek Hale, Digital Art, Drawing, Fanart, M/M, Misunderstandings, Sheriff Stilinski's Name is John
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-22
Updated: 2019-12-22
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:08:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21783487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DiscontentedWinter/pseuds/DiscontentedWinter, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Michicant123/pseuds/Michicant123
Summary: Derek isn't really trying to find himself, but it's kind of what happens.He finds someone else too.
Relationships: Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski
Comments: 297
Kudos: 2369
Collections: 12 Days of Sterek, A collection of my favorite fics





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Happy holidays, everyone! DW here. I wrote the words, and Michicant123 created the amazing art you can see in the last chapter! We hope you enjoy it!

Derek Hale learns three important things on his first day as a newly transferred deputy to the Beacon Hills Sheriff’s Department. The first thing is that the coffee in the station is shit, and the deputies have worn a well-trodden path to a place down the block that opens early, closes late, and gives anyone in uniform a discount. The second thing is that Mrs. Lambert, an eighty-nine-year-old woman who uses a walking frame, visits the front counter every day to complain about her neighbors and she has a list of petty grievances stretching back decades that she likes to discuss fresh every morning. And the third thing Derek learns is that Sheriff Stilinski’s son is a rude asshole.

Derek’s in the bullpen trying to unlearn two years of writing arrest reports in New York so that he doesn’t make a dog’s breakfast out of the first one he has to write in California when the door from the foyer swings open and the guys steps though. He’s a young guy. He can’t be much older than eighteen or nineteen. He’s wearing jeans and a red hoodie, and a shiny pair of chrome earphones that are plugged into the phone he’s staring at. He’s cute. He’s got pale skin, dark eyes, and hair that’s either artfully messy or he just forgot to brush it this morning. Whichever one it is, it’s a good look on him.

“Hey,” Derek says. “Can I—”

_Can I help you? Check that you’re actually supposed to be back here? Delay you for a second so I can get a decent look at you?_

But whatever Derek is going to say, the guy just strides straight past him towards the sheriff’s office without even acknowledging him.

A moment later Jordan Parrish follows the guy through the door, pulling it shut behind him. Jordan is Derek’s new partner. He’s open, friendly, and so fucking good-natured that Derek doesn’t quite know how to take him yet. He’s also currently humming some pop song that Derek doesn’t know.

“Who was that guy who came in before you?” Derek asks him as he approaches. 

“That’s Stiles,” Jordan says. “The sheriff’s kid. Hey, you want to go grab some lunch?”

Derek looks at his watch. “Yeah,” he says. “Sounds great.”

They leave out the back door, passing the sheriff’s office, and Derek can hear the low murmur of voices from inside and then the sheriff laughs at something the guy says.

Derek shakes his head and follows Jordan out into the parking lot.

Aren’t small town people supposed to be more friendly?

Rude asshole.

***

Derek has an apartment on Lake Street which, despite its name, doesn’t have a lake anywhere near it. It’s only claim to a water view would be the pothole in the parking lot that fills up if it rains. It’s a decent enough place, but Derek regrets more and more that he didn’t take his parents’ offer of the holiday house that borders the Preserve. Derek’s childhood memories of idyllic vacations spent in the Preserve are a big part of the reason he moved to Beacon Hills. The house has been in the family for three generations, and there’s a sort of understanding that anyone can use it at any time. And Derek didn’t really like the idea of having Uncle Peter and the army of evil minions he calls his children descending on his quiet like a horde of demons. Still, he thinks it might have been slightly more preferable to the college kids downstairs who listen to Skrillex. Derek is planning on accidentally running into them when he’s wearing his uniform, which should solve the problem without resorting to making any official complaints, but the opportunity hasn’t presented itself yet. And it’s still a lot quieter than his apartment in Brooklyn, so he can live with it.

He _likes_ Beacon Hills. His sister Laura keeps trying to coax him back to the big city like she’s afraid he’s going to wither and die in a small town, but Derek likes it here. He feels like he can breathe here. When he’s not at work he goes jogging in the Preserve, and doesn’t have to breathe in exhaust fumes the whole time he’s there.

He likes his job here. Sheriff Stilinski is a good boss, and Jordan is a good partner, and Derek is slowly getting a handle on the different paperwork. He and Jordan also spend a lot of time familiarizing Derek with Beacon Hills, and getting him up to speed on that local knowledge he needs to know. Like Harper’s Road. It’s not called that on the county maps, but everyone knows it as that because the Harper farm used to be there back in the 1960s. It’s these little quirks of local geography that Derek has to learn. He wonders if he’ll feel like a local once he does.

He can see himself staying in Beacon Hills, whatever Laura thinks, and he starts paying attention to the listings in the window of the real estate office beside the coffee shop. Everyone always says the cost of living in California is high, but maybe not everyone moves here from New York.

He likes that not much happens in Beacon Hills.

Which isn’t to say that _nothing_ happens. Every so often they’ll get an urgent call, because human beings, whether in New York or Beacon Hills, have the same universal capacity to be terrible to each other.

It’s lunchtime. Well, it’s six p.m., but Derek is on afternoon shifts, so it’s lunchtime. Derek is at his desk, picking at his pasta salad and half wishing he hadn’t bought a whole tub of it when it was on sale because now he has to _eat_ it, when his radio blasts and it’s Deputy Graeme—Tara—calling for urgent assistance.

Derek and Parrish are halfway down the corridor to the parking lot when Derek sees the sheriff’s kid blocking the way. He’s got his back to them, and he’s not wearing his big headphones, but his head’s down like he’s glued to his fucking phone like always.

“Move!” Derek yells at him. “Get out of the way!”

And then all he can hear is Tara’s panicking voice over the radio, so he grabs Stiles by the shirt and hauls him out of his way.

He doesn’t even register the sound of Stiles’s phone hitting the floor and smashing.

***

Tara’s okay. Well, she’s got bruises and abrasions, but she’s in better shape than the asshole who gave them to her. That guy is currently up at the hospital with Parrish getting checked out by a doctor because Tara managed to jam her Taser in his gut as he was going for her firearm. And Derek…

Derek is standing in front of Sheriff Stilinski’s desk staring down at the shattered pieces of Stiles’s phone. There’s no sign of Stiles, but the sheriff has a face like stone.

“Talk me through it, Hale,” the sheriff says, his tone cold.

“Sheriff, I’m really sorry about your son’s phone,” Derek says, “but I was trying to get to my cruiser as quickly as possible after Tara called for help, and he was in the way.”

The sheriff’s eyes narrow. “He was in the way?”

Derek has a feeling he’s on very dangerous ground here, and he’s not sure why. He didn’t do anything wrong. “Yes, sir. I yelled at him and—”

The door to the sheriff’s office opens, and Derek turns to see Stiles standing in the doorway. His face is blotchy and his eyes are red, and all this over a fucking broken phone? Derek fights to keep his expression schooled as Stiles’s eyes widen when he sees him.

“Stiles, not now,” Sheriff Stilinski says.

Stiles pulls the door shut again, and Derek hears his sneakers scuffing on the floor as he retreats.

The sheriff fixes his glare on Derek. “You _yelled_ at him?”

“I yelled at him to move,” Derek clarifies. “And he didn’t. So I pulled him out of the way to get past him.”

Something shifts in the Sheriff’s expression, and he raises a hand to his head. Rubs his forehead in the way that Derek knows means he’s tired of whatever bullshit he’s being forced to listen to. “Was his back to you?”

Derek wrinkles his brows. “Yes, sir, but—”

“Hale.” The sheriff draws a deep breath and lets it slowly out again. “I’m going to take a stab at this and guess that nobody told you Stiles is deaf, is that right?”

_Deaf?_

Derek feels his jaw drop, and all of his assumptions about Stiles deflating into a sad little pile of regret and mortification.

“Stiles is deaf,” the sheriff repeats, “and that phone was full of apps that help him function on a daily basis.” 

Derek looks down at the shattered plastic and glass.

Fuck.

***

“Fuck,” Parrish says, and then bites back an obvious smile. “Shit, Derek, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t laugh, but that’s funny as hell.”

They’re sitting in a bar a few blocks from the station, and Derek is on his second beer. At this rate, he’ll need to catch an Uber home.

Derek glares at him over the lip of his bottle of beer. “It’s really not.”

“It’s fine though,” Parrish says. “Stiles is okay, and the sheriff knows you didn’t know, and okay, yeah, you fucked up, but it wasn’t your fault. I guess we’re all just so used to knowing that it never occurred to anyone to tell you. And Stiles…” His brow creases. “He doesn’t like to draw attention to it, you know?”

“He wears fucking headphones,” Derek complains, even though it doesn’t make him feel any better.

“Look, I’ve only been here four years,” Parrish says. He picks up a soggy nacho chip from the plate they ordered a while back, and eats it. “I didn’t know Stiles when it happened, but I get the impression he got bullied pretty badly for it when he was in school, you know? Because kids are awful, and most of the time adults aren’t much better. So he doesn’t like to stand out.”

Derek wants to feel angry at being misled, but he knows that’d make him feel like even more of an asshole than he already does. It’s not like Stiles was deliberately trying to deceive him. He just really, really wishes that someone had given him a head’s up before today.

And then, in a flash of bitter guilt, he wonders exactly how fucking terrified Stiles was when he was grabbed from behind and jerked out of the way with what, for him, was no warning at all.

Derek takes another swig of his beer and hates himself a little bit more.

Parrish has the decency to look sympathetic at last. “Don’t beat yourself up about it, seriously. It could have happened to anyone.”

Derek huffs out a breath. “Sure.”

He appreciates Parrish’s attempt at commiseration, but it didn’t happen to anyone, did it? It happened to Derek, because Derek’s a fucking idiot.

He’s an idiot, and he feels bad.

His third and fourth beers agree with him.

***

Derek has Saturday off. It’s two days after the Phone Incident, and just past nine in the morning when he screws his courage and knocks on Sheriff Stilinski’s front door. He feels like a man on the gallows as he waits for someone to open it.

“Hale,” the sheriff says when he opens it. He’s wearing chequered pajama pants and a faded _Beacon Hills Sheriff’s Department Family Fun Day 2008_ T-shirt, but doesn’t look any less intimidating because of it, although that might just be Derek’s guilt talking. “What are you doing here on this fine morning?”

Derek tries not to shift from foot to foot like a chastened toddler. “I wanted to apologise, sir,” he says. “To both you and Stiles.”

Sheriff Stilinski appraises him for a moment, and then steps back to let him in the door.

Derek stands awkwardly in the hall.

It’s a nice house. It’s not new, and it’s certainly lived-in, but it looks comfortable. There’s a set of coat hooks on the wall just inside the door. The sheriff’s work jacket is hanging off one, and there’s a faded denim jacket on the hook next to it, so well-worn it looks as soft as cotton. And on the floor, a pair of scuffed red Converse look like they’ve been toed off and kicked there, landing haphazardly.

“Come on through,” the sheriff says.

He leads Derek down the hall and through to the back of the house and the kitchen. The kitchen smells of bacon and pancakes, and Derek’s stomach rumbles. And then his gaze falls on the small table. The sheriff’s half-eaten breakfast is sitting on the plate there. And, across from that, Stiles is seated. He looks up when the sheriff and Derek enter the kitchen, and then glares down at his pancakes like they’ve personally wronged him. He stabs one with a fork.

Stiles is wearing fewer layers than Derek is used to. He’s still in his pajama pants too, and a Stud Muffin T-shirt that’s so thin it clings to the planes of his chest. He’s not as skinny as his height and his constant movement makes him look. He’s leanly muscled. He chews a bite of pancake balefully, and Derek catches a glimpse of color in his ears: his hearing aids are bright blue.

“Stiles,” the sheriff says. “You remember Derek.”

Stiles’s gaze flicks up and then down again. “Yep.”

The sheriff rolls his eyes, and gives Derek a ‘go ahead’ gesture.

“Stiles,” Derek says. “I wanted to say I’m really sorry about your phone. And about pushing you like that. I didn’t know.”

Stiles jaw works furiously as he chews.

Derek looks uneasily at the sheriff.

“Stiles,” the sheriff says, and sighs.

Stiles relents. He sets his fork down and swallows. Then he looks up at Derek. “Okay, thank you for apologising. It’ll be a great consolation while I’m waiting a _week_ for my new phone.”

“Stiles,” the sheriff says again.

“I’m…” Derek feels guilt burn in his gut. “I’m really sorry.”

“You said,” Stiles reminds him. “And guess what?” He grins suddenly, bright and bitter, as he reaches up and tugs his hearing aids out. “I don’t want to hear it!”

And Derek has no idea what to do next.

He looks at the sheriff helplessly.

The man looks back at him and shrugs. “Come on, Hale, I’ll show you out.”

Stiles might be deaf, but the sheriff waits until they’re back in the hall before he opens his mouth again. “Look, I know you came here with the best intentions, and I’m sorry Stiles is so…” He pauses for a moment like he’s carefully trying to select his words, and then shakes his head. “You know what? No, I’m not sorry. He’s upset and he has a right to be. I appreciate your gesture in coming here, and I’m sure he will too once he gets his new phone, but until that happens he’s allowed to be a little salty.”

Derek nods, unsure how to respond. “What’s the, um, what’s the delay on the new phone? Is it like a special model?”

“A special model?” the sheriff snorts. “No, it’s just $900 I can’t afford the week before pay day since I just got the damn roof redone. Insurance will cover the cost of the replacement, but I have to come up with the cash to replace it first.”

And Derek feels that stab of guilt all over again, and it must show on his face.

The sheriff’s expression softens. “Hale, go on, get out of here and enjoy your weekend off. You don’t have another one for a while.”

Derek nods, and glances at the front door. And then, before he even has a chance to second-guess himself, he strides back into the Stilinskis’ kitchen.

“Hi,” he says, when Stiles looks up. “Again.”

Stiles narrows his eyes suspiciously.

“Um,” Derek says, looking at the bright blue hearing aids resting on the table and wondering if Stiles can even hear him right now. He digs his fingers into the pocket of his jeans, and pulls his phone out. It’s an iPhone. Not the newest model, but it’s in good condition. “Do you want to borrow my phone until you get yours replaced?”

Stiles's eyes narrow even further until he’s basically squinting like a malevolent cat. And then he holds up the finger of his left hand, and reaches for one of the hearing aids with his right. He pops it in his ear, moves his jaw from side to side, and then says, “What?”

“Do you want to borrow my phone until yours gets replaced?” Derek asks again.

Something in Stiles’s expression falters, softens. His eyes widen. “Really? Are you serious?”

Derek nods. “Does your SIM card still work? We can just swap them out for the week.”

For the first time Derek has ever seen, a genuine smile crosses Stiles’s face, and it lights his whole expression up. He’s beautiful when he smiles, and it makes Derek want to smile in return, and…oh shit no, he came here to apologise to Stiles, not to develop a crush on him because that would add even more weirdness and awkwardness to add to this whole mess, wouldn’t it?

Stiles’s smile is _not_ like the dawn, and Derek is a better poet than that anyway. Maybe. It’s never really come up before, but he likes to think he would be.

“Yeah,” Stiles says, the legs on his chair scraping against the floor as he stands. “I’m gonna go get it and see!”

And Stiles blows past him like a hurricane. Derek turns in his wake, and sees the sheriff standing in the doorway.

The sheriff smiles and nods, and Derek feels a burst of warmth—and relief—at having got something right for the first time in days.

***

Derek buys the cheapest phone he can to get him through the week, and figures it’ll be good to have a backup in case anything ever happens to his current phone. He’s also half-expecting to have his iPhone returned to him in the same condition he left Stiles’s, and is pleasantly surprised one morning when Stiles crosses to his desk in the bullpen and slides his phone back to him. There’s not even a scratch on it.

“Thanks, Deputy Hale,” he says. He’s wearing his big headphones again.

“It’s Derek,” Derek tells him, and nods at the other phone Stiles is holding in his hand. “You got your new one okay?”

Stiles looks down at the phone briefly, and then flashes him that incredible smile, and waves the phone in front of Derek’s face. “Nice, right?”

Derek catches a glimpse of the screen, and sees text on it. He reaches out to catch Stiles’s wrist gently, steadying the phone so he can read it:

\- You got your new one okay

\- Nice right

Derek releases Stiles’s wrist, and looks up to discover Stiles regarding him with raised eyebrows. He feels the flush rise up from the collar of his uniform shirt. “Oh, sorry.”

Stiles’s mouth quirks. He clearly doesn’t need his screen to read those words. “That’s okay. Apparently you just can’t stop grabbing me, Derek.”

Derek’s flush does not lessen. At all. He wonders if he’d be less embarrassed if he just slid under his desk and hid there for a while. Probably not. That doesn’t seem like the sort of thing that would go unnoticed.

Stiles’s eyes are bright with mischief. “Thanks again for letting me borrow your phone.”

“You too,” Derek says, because he’s a fucking idiot on so many levels.

Stiles checks his screen, laughs, and heads for his dad’s office.

It’s not until a little while later that Derek gets around to putting his SIM back in his phone, and he blinks when the screen lights up. He has pages and pages of newly installed apps. A few of them are clearly assistive technology, but some of them?

Derek feels his eyebrows shoot up.

Grindr. Scruff. Hornet. Taimi. Planet Romeo. Growlr. Jack’d.

Stiles has filled Derek’s phone with gay hook-up apps, and Derek hasn’t even heard of half of them.

He hears snuffling laughter, and turns sharply in his chair to see Stiles watching him from the sheriff’s office doorway.

Rude asshole.

But this time Derek is grinning when he thinks it.


	2. Chapter 2

Derek deletes all the dating apps Stiles downloaded onto his phone. Well, that’s the plan, at least. But also, he’s a single guy and he has needs. So maybe he keeps Grindr installed, even though he doesn’t think he’s looking for a random hook-up, which clearly a lot of the other users are. Maybe Grindr isn’t his demographic, but he can’t be the only guy out there looking for an actual relationship along with sex, right? There must be a few guys out there like him, hiding behind all those naked glistening torsos and innuendo-laden profiles, right? Like, where do all the cute but shy gay librarians hang out online? Where are all the gay dentists, or gay town planners, or gay chartered accountants? Do they have their own app? Where are the boring gays hiding, because those, Derek thinks, are his people.

Derek is twenty-eight, but Laura says he was born middle-aged.

And she wonders why he moved across the continent.

Derek was an introvert born into a family of extroverts—some more shameless than others—and it shows. He loves his loud, boisterous family, but he’s definitely the odd one out. Still, there’s a fine line between being alone and being lonely, and Derek is starting to worry that he’s about to cross it.

So he keeps Grindr on his phone, but he doesn’t use it. It’s his safety net or something, he supposes, but he’s not there yet. He’s not desperate to get laid. It’s not like he has both arms in plaster or anything, right? Derek can get himself off just fine, and he does, but it would be nice to have someone to watch TV with after, and maybe snuggle a little. It would be nice to have someone else sharing his space sometimes.

He starts thinking seriously of getting a shelter dog, but living alone in an apartment plus shift work wouldn’t be fair on a dog. He thinks about getting a hobby or taking a class to learn a new skill, but then he catches sight of the guitar case he hasn’t opened since that time in college he was sure he had musical genius that was just waiting to be tapped, and the _Italian For Dummies_ book sitting on his shelf gathering dust, and remembers how that usually works out for him. 

Still, apart from that vague sense of impending loneliness, Derek likes living in Beacon Hills. He likes his small circle of work friends, he likes his job, and he likes feeling like he’s a part of a community. Policing in Beacon Hills is a lot more proactive than it is reactive, and Derek likes that. He gets a chance to actually meet people, and not just when he’s arresting them. He can’t say that he enjoys dressing up as Gruffy the Safety Dog and letting preschoolers climb all over him while Parrish explains to them that their bodies are private property—the same consideration isn’t shown to Gruffy, apparently, who takes more than one kick to the thankfully heavily padded nuts—but that’s the price of being the newbie.

He even takes a selfie while he’s wearing the suit and sends it to Laura. He fully expects it will be her Christmas card this year, because Laura is a shit like that. He’s not sure why he gives her the ammunition, but he thinks that maybe if he’s showing her that he can laugh at himself then maybe she’ll actually start to believe he’s happy in Beacon Hills.

And he is, for the most part. Like Uncle Peter says, everyone is a work in progress, and Derek certainly feels more optimistic about a future in Beacon Hills than he ever felt about one in New York. There are parts of the city he will always miss, he supposes, but he loves the quieter pace here and being closer to nature. Everything else will fall into place, he supposes.

And maybe he’ll even work up the courage to try to meet someone, just as soon as he gets over his dumb crush on Stiles. Because Stiles might not be his colleague, but he’s still work-adjacent and the old adage still stands: you don’t shit where you eat. That goes double when the snack in question is your boss’s son.

Still, he can’t help but watch Stiles whenever he wanders into the station. Can’t help the way his smile broadens if Stiles strolls over to his desk to make conversation. And he definitely can’t help being totally fucking blatant about it. Obvious crush is obvious.

“I’m just saying,” Parrish says as they’re patrolling one night, “that it’s pretty clear you’ve got a thing for Stiles.”

“I don’t have a thing for Stiles,” Derek says, because Derek is a lying liar who lies.

“Oh yeah?” Parrish asks idly as he turns the cruiser onto Main Street. “Because I’m pretty sure he’s got a thing for you.”

Derek ignores that—and the hopeful fluttering in his chest—and keeps his eyes peeled for crime and wrongdoing.

It’s Beacon Hills at 3 a.m. on a Tuesday night.

They see two stray dogs and a morose looking pigeon.

It’s a jungle out there.

***

Summer hits, dry and hot, and Derek’s shirt sticks to his back with sweat as he follows the path from the parking lot down to the shore of the lake. Gravel crunches under his feet. Last week was particularly gruelling, and Derek and most of the rest of the department spent almost an entire shift out on the highway directing traffic around an accident site when a tanker carrying chemicals collided with an SUV. No fatalities, fortunately, but it had taken around seven hours for the clean up crew to finish. The parts of Derek’s skin left exposed by his uniform are still itchy and peeling with sunburn. As a thanks to his team, the sheriff is hosting a barbeque at the lake. 

Derek can hear a bunch of kids screaming excitedly before he even gets to the lake’s edge.

The lake is a popular spot for people on weekends, but the advantage of working weird shifts is that the barbeque is being held on a Tuesday afternoon so most of the people Derek sees are his colleagues and their families. There are a few dog walkers and sunbathers further along the lake’s edge, but the area around the dock has been solidly claimed by the Beacon Hills Sheriff’s Department. As Derek watches, a little girl with red hair flying behind her like a tail of flame goes pelting down the dock and flings herself gleefully into the water. She lands with a loud splash, vanishes under the water for a moment, and emerges again in the midst of a clutch of shrieking, swimming kids.

Derek heads along to the grill and finds the sheriff and a few of the other guys drinking sodas and watching the steaks cook. And sitting with his ass planted on a cooler a little way away is Stiles. He sees Derek and waves, and Derek walks over to him.

Stiles is wearing board shorts and a T-shirt and a backwards Mets cap. He looks like a frat boy. It’s a surprisingly good look on him. Derek is used to seeing him wearing way too much flannel for someone who is not a professional lumberjack.

“Hey, Derek,” Stiles says.

“Hey,” Derek says. “It’s good to see you.”

Stiles watches his mouth when he talks, and Derek realises that he hasn’t got his phone in his hands. He’s also not wearing his bright blue hearing aids.

“Where’s your phone?”

Stiles tilts his head in his dad’s direction. “Confiscated.”

But he’s rolling his eyes when he says it, so Derek figures it can’t be that bad.

“Why?”

“Dad thinks I need to go for a swim,” Stiles says. “Apparently I’ve been complaining all week about the heat, and he didn’t drag my ass all the way out here—his words—so that I wouldn’t go in the water.”

Derek ducks his head to hide his smile. “Maybe he’s got a point.”

When he looks up again, Stiles’s mouth is pressed into a thin line, and his forehead is creased.

“What?” Derek asks.

Stiles exhales slowly. “What did you say? You were looking down.”

“Oh, shit, I’m sorry.” Derek feels like an idiot now. Stiles hasn’t got his phone and he’s not wearing his hearing aids. Derek knew that. Why the fuck is he so bad at this? “I said that maybe he’s got a point.”

“Of course you’d take his side,” Stiles says, his flash of a smile letting Derek know that they’re okay. “He signs your pay checks!”

Derek laughs again, and remembers not to duck his head this time. “Yeah.”

Stiles stands up from the cooler and tugs his shirt over his head. It takes his cap with it, and leaves his hair standing up wildly.

Derek does not let his gaze travel appreciatively down Stiles’s leanly muscled torso, all the way to that treasure trail that leads to—

No.

That doesn’t happen.

_Boss’s son. Boss’s son. Boss’s son._

Stiles flashes him another grin as he heads for the water.

Derek watches him as he wades into the water, keeping his distance from both the shrieking, splashing kids and the more sedate adults, and he wonders, with a pang of sudden recognition, if Stiles is also lonelier than his smile lets on. 

***

The sheriff takes Wednesday off work, but is back again on Thursday with dark bags under his eyes and a coffee in his hand.

“Feeling better, sir?” Derek asks.

“Wasn’t me,” the sheriff says and lets out a weary sigh. “It was Stiles. We spent most of last night up at the hospital.”

Derek’s shock must show on his face.

“Ear infection,” the sheriff says, his mouth pressing into a tight line. “He gets a couple of bad ones now and then. He has ever since he got the hearing aids.” The sheriff rubbed a hand over his forehead.

“How is he?” Derek asks.

“Better now. He’s back home, sleeping.”

“How long has he had the hearing aids?” Derek asks, hoping he isn’t overstepping.

“Five years,” the sheriff says. “He was sixteen when he had the accident. He’d only had his license a few weeks when a drunk driver cleaned him up on his way home from lacrosse practice.”

“Shit,” Derek says softly, his chest tightening.

“Could have been worse,” the sheriff says. “Could have been a lot worse.” And then he shakes his head. “But, you know, try telling that to a teenaged kid who’s suddenly lost his hearing. I sometimes think he still hasn’t fully come to terms with it, and nights like last night don’t help.”

Derek feels a pang of sympathy, and he’s not sure if it’s for Stiles or the sheriff or both of them.

The sheriff draws in a deep breath, straightening up. “Back to the grind, I guess.”

“Yes, sir,” Derek agrees, and watches as the man heads for his office.

He thinks of Stiles while he works, and hopes that he’s feeling better. Then, when he’s out on patrol he sees a squirrel with a dumb look on its face and takes a photo of it and sends it to Stiles, who has for some reason Derek doesn’t want to over-analyse too much, has added him as a Facebook friend.

\- I thought you were supposed to be in bed, not running around the Preserve?

He gets a response less than three minutes later:

\- OMG! You made a joke! Are you being held against your will? Is there a gun to your head? Do I have to warn Dad you’ve been kidnapped?

Derek gets through the rest of his shift with a smile.

***

It’s a Friday night—it’s always a Friday night—when the shit hits the fan. Derek isn’t even working. He’s sitting at home zoning out in front of Netflix and wondering if he can finish the rest of his ginger chili chicken and coconut rice now because it tasted so damn good, or if he should save it until tomorrow and feel decadent for two days in a row—this is the boring life that Laura teases him about—when his phone rings. It’s Jordan.

“Derek? There’s been an accident. The sheriff’s in the hospital. Everyone else is at the scene, and I can’t leave him here in case…” He sounds on the edge of panic, and Derek’s never heard him like this. Wouldn’t have even thought it was possible. “Can you go and get Stiles? He needs to be here. Please hurry.”

“Yeah.” Derek is already halfway out the door, car keys in hand. “Jesus, Jordan, what happened?”

“Pursuit,” Jordan says. His voice is choppy. “John’s cruiser got rammed off the road. He’s pretty bad, Derek.”

“How bad?” Derek demands, pulling his door shut and running for the stairs. It’ll be quicker than the lift. “I gotta tell Stiles something.”

“They’re prepping him for surgery now,” Jordan says. “He coded on the way here, Derek, but they got him back.”

Oh fuck no. Derek fights a wave of dizziness as he hits the parking lot and races for the Camaro. He peels out of the parking lot with a screech of tires. Like there’s going to be any deputy in Beacon Hills giving a fuck about enforcing the traffic laws right now. He makes it to the sheriff’s house in under ten minutes, where he’s pretty sure the speed he’s doing probably wakes up everyone in the street.

Except Stiles.

Derek bangs on the front door and rings the doorbell.

Shit. If Stiles is asleep, how is Derek supposed to wake him up?

He presses the doorbell again and this time, through the glass panel in the door, he sees a faint flickering light. A moment later the door is pulled open, and Derek sees Stiles standing there, his phone still buzzing and lighting up from the doorbell notification, and a horrified expression on his face.

He’s a cop’s kid. He knows exactly what’s going on.

“No,” he says. “Derek, no. _No!_ ”

Derek holds up his palms. “He’s in the hospital. I’m taking you there now. He’s in the hospital.”

He doesn’t know if it’s the shock, or if Stiles just hasn’t heard a word he’s said, because he just stands there shaking his head. Derek steps inside the door and runs his hand up the wall looking for the light switch.

The light flicks on. Stiles is as pale as a ghost.

“He’s in the hospital,” Derek says, saying the words as clearly and carefully as he can. “Come on. I’ll take you to him.”

Stiles jolts into action at last, reaching down and grabbing his shoes in one hand while he fumbles with his phone in the other. “What happened?”

“A pursuit,” Derek says, and Stiles watches his mouth and then stares down at his phone screen. “His car was rammed. I don’t know how bad it is, but you need to be there.”

Stiles nods shakily.

“Where are your keys?” Derek asks. “Keys?”

Stiles blinks at him for a moment, and then grabs the soft denim jacket hanging from the hook by the door. He digs into the pocket and produces a set of house keys. He replaces them and shrugs the jacket on over his t-shirt and sleep pants, and then follows Derek barefoot from the house, his shoes tucked under his arm and tears streaming down his face.

***

The night is one of the longest of Derek’s life.

Jordan is sitting in the waiting room of the ER when they burst through the doors, his head in his hands and his uniform shirt covered in the sheriff’s blood.

The sheriff is in surgery. Jordan doesn’t know anything else. His hands are shaking almost as bad as Stiles’s. Stiles is quiet and hollow, trembling and twitching, eyes wide but not fixed on anything. He’s not wearing his hearing aids, because he hates them, or his ear infection still hurts, or it was the middle of the fucking night—Derek doesn’t know the reason, and it doesn’t even matter, but when after hours of waiting the surgeon comes to talk to them, it’s another mess.

The sheriff is alive, but the surgeon doesn’t _say_ that. Not in any plain words. There is so much, Derek thinks, that people talk around, even in situations like these, and Stiles’s jittery shock is doing him no favors when it comes to reading the surgeon’s lips. And his shaking hands can’t hold his phone screen still enough to read.

So it’s Derek who grabs Stiles by the shoulders and forces him into stillness. Forces him to watch his mouth when he says, carefully and clearly, “Your dad is alive. He’s alive.”

And then there’s a lot of medical jargon that Derek can’t even tell is good or bad.

“Write it down,” he says to the surgeon as Stiles’s speech-to-text app stumbles over some of the words and spits out gibberish. “Write it _down_.”

It takes a while, but eventually Stiles is squinting over the surgeon’s words, and googling what he doesn’t immediately understand. It’s a slow process as he asks the surgeon questions, his voice still shaky and a little shrill from panic, and the surgeon answers them slowly and carefully.

It takes about an hour before Stiles can get into his dad’s room to sit with him. Derek and Jordan leave him perched on the edge of a chair at the side of the sheriff’s bed, both father and son deathly pale, and Derek thinks of how their positions were reversed once, and not that many years ago.

“You okay?” he asks Jordan, squeezing his shoulder.

“Yeah.” Jordan drags a hand through his hair. “I gotta head back to the station, let everyone know.” He looks down at his shirt and grimaces. “Clean up and stuff.”

“Okay,” Derek says.

Jordan lets out a shuddering breath. “Just… _shit_.” He stills for a moment, and then seems to shake himself awake. “Can you stay with Stiles? Keep an eye on him for a while?”

“I will,” Derek says. He’d never even thought of leaving. “I’ll make sure he’s okay.”

It’s not just a promise he’s making to Jordan. It’s one he’s making to both Stiles and the sheriff as well, even though neither of them can hear it.


	3. Chapter 3

It’s mid-morning on Saturday by the time Derek convinces Stiles to leave the hospital. The sheriff is still asleep, and the doctors are keeping him that way for at least another few days to give the swelling on his brain a chance to go down. In addition to a few fractures, the sheriff has a punctured lung and a ruptured spleen. He’s still listed as critical, but the doctors hope to downgrade that to serious but stable over the next few days. He’s not in a good way, but…

Derek remembers what the man said about Stiles’s accident and figures the same applies now: _“Could have been a lot worse.”_

Which isn’t much consolation for Stiles at the moment, Derek knows, but it will be one day.

“Take a shower,” Derek tells Stiles when he gets him to the house, “and have a sleep. I’ll take you up to see him again in a few hours.”

He speaks slowly and clearly, but Stiles looks down at his phone anyway. Derek figures he’s exhausted, and he’s beyond stressed, and it must be so fucking _hard_ to always have to double check everything the way he does.

“What if…” Stiles blinks. “What if something happens?”

“You’ve got your phone,” Derek says, “and I’ve got mine. If something happens, we’ll go straight back. But right now, you need to take a shower and have a sleep, okay?”

And Derek knows Stiles well enough to know exactly how he’d usually respond to being spoken to like this. With more than one f-bomb, no doubt. It’s a testament to how tired he is, how utterly drained, that he just nods instead and begins to climb the stairs.

A few minutes later, Derek hears the pipes creak as the shower spurts to life.

He makes himself a coffee in the Stilinskis’ kitchen, and takes it into the living room to drink. Then he sets it down on the table and falls asleep on the couch without even tasting it.

Four hours later Stiles wakes him up.

Derek dumps his cold coffee down the kitchen sink and they head off to the hospital again.

***

Derek has the weekend off, and he spends most of it on the Stilinskis’ couch between visits to the hospital. At some point he goes back to his apartment and packs an overnight bag, and at some point Stiles helps him make up the spare bed. Derek exchanges a lot of texts with Jordan, and with a few of the other deputies. By the time Monday rolls around again and Derek is due back at work, they have a schedule worked out. Derek’s shifts have all been swapped so he’s not working any nights or lates for the next few weeks, which means he drops Stiles off at the hospital before he starts work in the morning, and picks him up again in the afternoon. If he wants to leave before then he can text Derek and someone will come and collect him. He expects a text on Monday, because the sheriff is still out and it can’t be fun to sit in a chair beside his bed for eight hours, but Stiles doesn’t contact him at all. And he’s still there when Derek goes to get him after work.

“Did you eat today?” Derek asks him as they drive back toward Stiles’s house.

“I had a sandwich,” Stiles says.

“We should stop and pick up some—”

“Derek.”

Derek cuts a look at him.

Stiles looks a little more relaxed today. Still tired and wrung out, but not just barely hanging on like he was over the weekend. And there’s a faint light back in his eyes that Derek wants to cup like a fragile spark in kindling and coax into a flame. “I can cook, Derek.”

“You can?”

Stiles rolls his eyes. “Yeah. Of course I can. Who do you think makes Dad all those salads he takes to work and then secretly throws away before he goes and buys a cheeseburger?”

“I have never seen that happen,” Derek lies, deadpan.

Stiles stares at him wide-eyed for a moment and laughs abruptly, his entire body going lax in the front seat of the Camaro. He punches Derek ineffectually in the shoulder, and Derek laughs too, warmth settling in his chest, and figures that Stiles is going to be okay.

Still, as they’re making mac and cheese—“Dad can’t have this much cheese, so when he wakes up, don’t you tell him we made it!”—Derek doesn’t even think about repacking his little overnight bag and setting off for his apartment again. And it’s not just the thought of leaving Stiles alone.

It's the thought of being alone himself.

He likes the way he and Stiles knock shoulders when they’re working at the kitchen counter. He likes eating on the couch in front of the TV, their socked feet on the coffee table as Stiles chortles at the subtitles on the comedy they’re watching. He likes listening to Stiles hum tunelessly as he loads the dishwasher in the kitchen and Derek takes the trash out.

And then he wonders how much of a domestic vampire he is, creeping around and insinuating himself in Stiles’s spaces and breathing them all in just because it feels so much nicer than to be alone.

It wouldn’t be so bad, he figures, if they were just friends, but Derek wants more than that, doesn’t he? Something about the way he’s here feels a little deceitful because of it. A little crass, maybe, because his motives aren’t purely altruistic. It’s not like he expects anything in return—he’s not a total asshole—but he likes this new closeness between them enough to wonder if that’s something they can build on later.

Stiles goes to bed at about nine, and Derek watches TV for another half an hour or so. Then he checks the doors are locked before heading upstairs. He showers and changes into his sleep pants and a thin T-shirt, and then goes into the spare room. He plugs his phone in to charge on the beside table, and stares at it a while before sighing and reaching for it.

He dials.

“Are you okay?” Laura demands when she answers on the third ring.

Shit. Derek had forgotten that time zones were a thing and that it’s past midnight there.

“Sorry.” He winces. “Yeah, I’m okay. Sorry, I can call back tomorrow.”

“Well I’m awake now,” Laura says, as practical as ever and with no censure in her tone. “What’s up, baby bro?”

Derek rolls his eyes. “You still calling me that?”

He can hear the grin in her voice. “Until the day I die. Seriously though, what’s going on?”

And Derek tells her. About the sheriff’s accident, about looking after Stiles, and about how he’s now sleeping in the guest room and panicking that he’s being a—

“A domestic vampire? That’s not really a thing, Der. I don’t think you can domesticate vampires.”

“It’s like an emotional vampire,” Derek defends. “But for domestic settings.”

He can almost see her eye roll. “It’s really not a thing.”

“That’s what you’re hung up on?”

“You’re the one who won’t let it go,” Laura points out, which is fair. “You’re not a domestic vampire, Derek. You’re lonely, and you have a crush on this guy, but even if you didn’t, you’d still help him, right?”

“Right,” Derek says cautiously.

“Right,” Laura says emphatically.

Derek waits for her to dispense more sisterly wisdom.

“That’s literally it, Der,” she says. “You have no ulterior motives. If you feel guilty, that’s just you. It’s always just you. Uncle Peter was born without a guilt tank, and somehow you got his. And mine. And Cora’s. It’s a mess in there. Look, I’m not saying that you should immediately go and declare your love for this guy, but you don’t need to feel bad about liking him. That’s what humans do, Derek. We like each other.”

“I don’t like it when you pretend I’m a robot,” Derek mutters.

“It’s an analogy.”

“I don’t think it is.”

“What the hell do you know about analogies?” Laura teases. “You’re a robot.” Her tone softens. “Listen, baby bro, you’re not a robot, or a vampire, okay? You’re just an over-thinker. We don’t have many of those in our family, so sometimes we don’t know what to do with you. But you’re not being creepy by helping out a friend, okay? Even if you want him to be more than a friend at some point.”

That settles a little of his disquiet.

“Thanks, Lulu,” he says softly into the phone.

“Goodnight, Der Bear.”

“Goodnight.”

***

Derek has Wednesday off because that’s the day that the doctors are going to attempt to bring the sheriff out of his induced coma, and nobody at the station wants Stiles to have to be there on his own. The “just in case” goes unsaid when Jordan tells Derek his roster’s been changed so he has the day free. They make it to the hospital by ten, and speak with the doctors, and then it’s just a waiting game. Stiles is not good at waiting games. He walks back and forth in the waiting room, a barely contained ball of nervous energy. He rearranges the things on the notice board. He picks at the leaves of a plastic plant. He sits beside Derek and jiggles his knee.

Derek puts a hand on his thigh to stop him. “Want to play _Words with Friends_?”

“People still play that?” Stiles asks.

“Sure,” Derek says. “If it’s still here, and you didn’t delete it to make room for all those gay hook up apps.”

Stiles huffs out a breath.

“I know you were just trying to embarrass me.”

Stiles tilts his head, watching Derek’s mouth as he speaks. “Embarrass you?”

Derek nods, eyebrows raised, daring Stiles to contradict him.

“Excuse you,” Stiles says. “That happened to be my incredibly subtle and only slightly awkward way of letting you know that I’m not straight.”

“It _was_?” Jesus Christ. Is it possible Derek has met someone worse at flirting than he is? Surely not. Statistically speaking alone there is nobody in the continental United States who is worse than Derek at flirting. Nobody.

Stiles rolls his eyes. “You were meant to say, “Hey, Stiles, why did you put these gay hook up apps here?’ And I was meant to say, ‘Oh, did I forget to delete those when I was using them? Whoops.’ And then you’d know.”

“I don’t think that’s how real people communicate,” Derek says cautiously, and decides to check with Laura next time they talk.

“Huh,” Stiles says. His leg is still jiggling under Derek’s hand. “Hey, Derek?”

“What?”

“I’m not straight,” Stiles says. “Just FYI.”

Derek feels the heat rising in his face. “I’ll make a note of that,” he says. “For future reference.”

Stiles’s gaze cuts to his phone and back, and he smiles slowly. “You do that.”

There are pauses in their conversation, Derek thinks. Punctuation. Gaps like the lacunas in orchestral pieces, to allow Stiles to catch up. And Derek, who has always hated the pressure to talk, to fill the silence, is comfortable with it. Sometimes Derek needs time to catch up too.

“Sometimes you look at your screen,” Derek says, “and sometimes you read lips. Why?”

“Lip reading is hard,” Stiles says, gaze dropping to his phone before it lifts again. “Some studies say that you only get about thirty percent of what people are saying, even if you’re really good. But what I actually do is speech reading.”

“What’s that?”

Stiles doesn’t look at his phone. His mouth quirks. “That’s what I just did then. It’s relying on context, but it’s also reading more than your lips. It’s looking at the way your eyebrows go up when you ask a question, and reading your body language. And let me tell you, Deputy Resting Bitch Face, you are not an easy read.”

“I’m not?”

“Hence the whole app thing,” Stiles says. “I was pretty sure you either thought I was hot, or you wanted to murder me. You have a very intense glare, Derek.”

Derek grimaces. “My sister Laura says I’m a robot.” 

Stiles looks at his phone and laughs. “I mean, harsh but fair, dude. Harsh but fair.”

“You dad says you don’t like wearing your hearing aids.”

Stiles’s laughter fades. “Yeah. They hurt after a while. And sometimes people see them and they yell, and that makes it worse. Like, I don’t need you to be _louder_ , I need you to be _clearer_.”

“I get that,” Derek says. “But why did you get bright blue ones?”

Stiles rolls his eyes. “Because only _old_ people wear skin-coloured hearing aids, Derek!”

“You are a very complicated person, aren’t you?” Derek teases gently.

“So many layers, dude,” Stiles agrees. “So many layers.”

“I like it,” Derek says softly.

Stiles’s cheeks go pink and he ducks his head.

They play _Words With Friends_ to kill the time.

***

It takes a while for the sheriff to come around, and he’s not fully there when he does. Still, he clutches Stiles’s hand and mumbles something, and Stiles sags in relief and starts sobbing because his dad is alive, and awake, and knows who he is.

So many layers, Derek thinks, watching from the door, and Stiles has been keeping this one locked down tightly for days.

He waits at the door and watches to make sure the doctors are including Stiles. He doesn’t intrude, doesn’t interject, but he needs to be certain that Stiles is getting all the information that he needs, and once or twice Stiles’s gaze cuts to him and he gives Derek a small, grateful smile.

Derek watches as the sheriff mumbles something again, and then grunts, frustrated, and tugs his shaking hands out of Stiles’s grip. He raises them off his chest, wincing a little at the effort, and makes a series of shaky gestures in Stiles’s direction. And then he repeats them, more emphatically.

Stiles nods, his eyes filling with tears. “I love you too, Dad.”

***

It’s late afternoon when they leave the hospital. Derek gets permission from Stiles to text Jordan and let everyone at the station know the sheriff is doing as best as can be expected, but he’s not up for visitors yet. If he was, Derek knows, there’d be a line up of anxious deputies all the way out the door.

“It’s okay,” Stiles says as they walk toward the car. “It’s better. It’s...” He bites his lip, and worries it for a moment with his teeth. “It’ll be okay.”

What it is, Derek thinks, is the sharp fear of losing his dad fading away only to be replaced by something else altogether: the looming practicalities of his hospital care, his insurance, his rehab, and the long road to recovery in front of him. It might be weeks before he’s out of hospital, and months before he’s up and about again. It’s Stiles’s immediate fear replaced with a new and different challenge.

“There is...” Stiles exhales shakily. “Derek, there is so much that Dad does for me. What if I can’t do the same for him?”

“You can,” Derek tells him, and doesn’t doubt it for a second.

Stiles drags his fingers through his hair. “I’m gonna have to move his bedroom downstairs, aren’t I? That’s the first thing.”

“Yeah,” Derek agrees. “That’s the first thing. And me and some of the other guys from the station can help you move the furniture, and make sure the downstairs bathroom is okay for him to use while he’s still injured.”

“Do you know what a pain in the ass it’s going to be to deal with his insurance over the phone?” Stiles asks. “I hate those relay services. Why can’t you just do it all over text message or email?”

“I don’t know,” Derek says. “But we’ll figure it out.”

“He does so much for me,” Stiles repeats softly.

“I don’t think it’s a competition, Stiles.”

Stiles shows him a shaky smile. “Yeah, I know.”

The late afternoon sunlight is throwing long shadows over the hospital parking lot.

“Do you want to get pizza?” Derek asks. They’ve skipped lunch, so Derek’s vote is for an early dinner.

“Yeah,” Stiles says, straightening up and drawing a deep breath. “Let’s go to Tony’s, on Pine Street. They have the best pizza there.”

Stiles waits in the car in the parking lot out the back of Tony’s while Derek goes inside with their order. It’s a long wait, and Derek’s glad he left his keys with Stiles so he can put the windows down or blast the air or whatever.

When he gets outside again, pizzas in hand, the windows of the Camaro are still up. Derek juggles the pizzas while he opens the door. A blast of death metal hits him.

Stiles jolts when he sees him, and twists the volume on the stereo down. He looks embarrassed, for some reason.

Derek sets the pizzas in the back, and sits in the driver’s seat.

He watches as Stiles slides his twitching fingers along the inside of the car door. For a moment Derek thinks he’s going to make a grab for the door handle, but his fingers skim right past that, down to—

Derek’s heart skips a beat.

Down to the speakers, where the music is still faintly playing. Can… can Stiles _feel_ the music? The beating pulse of the distant bass pushing through the speakers? Of course he can.

And then Stiles turns his head and catches Derek watching, and a flush darkens his face.

“Do you want to turn it up?” Derek asks, and gestures to the stereo.

Stiles hesitates for a moment, and then swallows. “Okay.”

He turns the volume knob so quickly that the sudden blast of noise almost drives Derek through the roof of the Camaro.

It’s so fucking _loud_ that Derek thinks his brain is about to explode. He covers his ears with his hands, grimacing, but when he looks back at Stiles again, Stiles has his eyes closed and is wearing a faint smile as the thumping bass vibrates through the car. Derek can feel it punching him in the gut and reverberating in his bones, and it takes him a moment to push past the nausea and then it’s not so bad.

And Stiles is smiling. At first it’s just a faint, shy smile, but then he opens his eyes, and flashes Derek a broad, open grin, and says something. Derek sees his mouth moving, but can’t hear a damn word over the thumping music.

“I can’t hear you!” Derek tells him and shakes his head helplessly, hands shoved over his ears still. 

And Stiles drops his head back and laughs and laughs and laughs.


	4. Chapter 4

Derek moves back into his apartment a few days before the sheriff is due to be released from the hospital. He and Jordan and a few of the guys have helped Stiles shift the sheriff’s bedroom into the living room, and put up some rails in the downstairs bathroom. Stiles had winced at the shower stool Jordan brought over: “Dad’s going to _hate_ that.”

Just like Stiles hates his hearing aids, Derek thinks. The Stilinski men are cut from the same cloth. They’re proud, and don’t like to be pitied. The trick is, of course, not to pity them.

“He’ll just have to suck it up,” Derek had said, and Stiles had snorted and laughed.

And now, back in his own apartment, Derek misses living with Stiles. It was only three weeks in the end, but somehow those three weeks have made their mark on him. He leaves a space on the couch now. He makes enough food for two. He automatically puts on the subtitles when he watches a movie. Derek has always worried that he wasn’t flexible enough, wasn’t companionable enough, to leave space in his life for another person. But it turns out that he is, just as long as that other person is Stiles.

The idea is both hopeful and terrifying, and Derek doesn’t know what to do with it. Except…

On his first night back in his own apartment he turns off the television, opens up his laptop, searches for a YouTube tutorial on basic sign language, and opens the video.

***

Sheriff Stilinski traditionally hosts a Fourth of July barbecue in his backyard every year. This year Jordan and Tara have taken over all the hard work, though they’re still holding it in the Stilinskis’ backyard. Derek doesn’t go—he’s rostered to work. He’s not upset about it, because that’s the nature of his job. If he works the Fourth of July, maybe he’ll get Thanksgiving off. Or maybe he won’t. Not expecting too much when it comes to rostering is also the nature of his job.

Derek is on desk duty the afternoon of the barbecue, and it’s a quiet shift. Things are fairly busy out on the road, but the holiday is keeping most people away from the front counter of the station. Which means that Derek gets to sit back and play his tutorials and practice his sign language. So far he’s getting the hang of finger spelling, but he’s not good with words or phrases yet.

It’s already dark outside when the station doors roll open and Stiles saunters up to the counter wearing a grin, his bright blue hearing aids, and too much plaid. He sets a Tupperware container on the counter and slides it over. “Happy Fourth of July, Derek.”

Derek can’t stop the smile spreading over his face. “You brought me dinner?”

Stiles nods. “Since you’re missing the barbecue, I figured the least I could do was save you some.”

The Tupperware container is still warm when Derek curls his fingers around it.

“Jordan drove me,” Stiles says. He wrinkles his nose. “He’s waiting in the parking lot, being all non-obtrusive or something.”

Nonobtrusive, because there’s something to be non-obtrusive about? Derek’s heart beats a little faster. Is this... is this Stiles making a move on him?

“Thank you,” Derek says. He lifts his hand to his mouth, his palm flat, and then gestures to Stiles. It’s like blowing a kiss without making a kissy face.

Stiles raises his eyebrows. “Did you... did you just sign ‘thank you’?”

Derek flushes. “Yes.”

Stiles’s eyes shine. “Holy shit. Are you learning to sign?”

“Yes,” Derek says, feeling his flush creep all the way up his face. “Really, really badly though.”

Stiles laughs. “Oh my god. Der?”

“Yes?”

“You’d better open this door right now so that I can get back there.”

Derek hits the button behind the counter. A moment later he has his arms full of limbs and plaid and bright, laughing eyes. And then, before he’s even had a moment to enjoy it, Stiles draws back and gestures to Derek’s hands.

“Show me what you’ve learned.”

Derek winces. “I can barely do the alphabet, Stiles.”

He knows he’s slow and clumsy and awkward, and he wishes he’d waited until he was good before sharing this with Stiles.

“Okay,” Stiles says. “Like, if you could sign any one thing to me right now, what would you sign?”

And Derek’s mind goes totally blank. Then, feeling like an idiot, he reaches out and takes Stiles’s hand in his own. He turns it over so that Stiles’s palm is facing up. Then, using his index finger, he traces a curve on Stiles’s skin, like an upside down fish hook. And then he traces its mirror image right beside it.

“It’s not a sign,” Derek says. “It’s...”

“It’s a heart,” Stiles says, and he sounds breathless. He blinks, and his eyes shine, and he laughs. “Holy shit! You’re a _romantic_.”

Derek shuffles his feet, his face burning. 

“Oh, no,” Stiles says. “Don’t give me that face. You’re a romantic, and I am here for it. Derek, I am _so_ here for it!”

Stiles tugs his hand free from Derek’s, and then he’s pressing it against Derek’s cheek while the other one curls around the back of his neck and pulls him into a kiss.

It’s incandescent. It’s electric. It’s _everything_.

And, Derek likes to think, it would have lasted longer if Jordan hadn’t suddenly appeared in the foyer wondering why Stiles was taking so long.

***

John Stilinski gives Derek a look when he turns up at the house one night with his guitar case.

“Stiles is taking a shower,” he says. “Are you here to serenade him, Hale, because I gotta tell you, I don’t know if you’ve thought that through.”

Derek flushes. “I can’t even play.”

“That clarifies exactly nothing, son,” John says. He leans on his crutches as he makes his way slowly into the living room. “Get the door for me, will you?”

Derek shuts the door behind him, and follows John into the living room.

John winces as he eases himself down into a chair. “Stiles doesn’t date, Derek.”

Derek flinches.

John smiles slightly. “There it is. He’s been squirrelly as hell since the barbecue, and wouldn’t tell me a damn thing. But there it is.”

“I…” And Derek has no idea where to go with that.

He hears the pipes upstairs shutting off.

“Stiles doesn’t date,” John says again. “He never has. And while I’m pretty sure he’s not exactly living like a monk, he doesn’t have relationships.” His expression softens. “So if you’ve somehow got through those walls he’s put up, then I’m sure as hell not going to stand in your way.”

“Thank you, sir,” Derek says, and braces for the shovel talk.

“Jordan told me how you looked out for Stiles when I got hurt,” John says. “I appreciate that, more than you’ll ever know.”

Derek nods, and waits for the rest. The sentence that begins with ‘But’ and ends with an impromptu gun cleaning.

“Shit,” John says, and gestures to the remote control. It’s out of his reach on the coffee table. “Can you grab that for me?” 

“No problem,” Derek says, and passes it to him.

“Thank you, son,” John says, a faint smile on his face as he settles back to watch TV. “Why don’t you head upstairs? It sounds like he’s out of the bathroom now.”

Derek nods again, still clutching his guitar case, and goes upstairs. There’s a light coming from an open doorway, and Derek walks toward it.

Stiles is sitting on his bed. He’s got a book open on his lap, and he looks totally engrossed. His hair is still damp from the shower, and curling a little at the ends. Derek wants to run his hands through it. His skin is pink from the shower as well, and the things Derek wants to do to it are a whole lot less G-rated.

Derek waves, the movement large and exaggerated to catch Stiles’s peripheral vision. “Stiles?”

Stiles looks up, his expression transforming when he sees Derek. A smile breaks out across his face. “Derek!” And then it falters, and he blinks, and he narrows his eyes. “Why do you have a guitar case?”

Derek sets it down on the floor. “I want to try something. But can we talk first?”

Stiles gets up and crosses to his desk. It’s a mess of books and papers, as chaotic and full of information as Stiles himself. He picks up his hearing aids and grimaces a little as he inserts them, and then grabs his phone. “What’s up?”

“Um,” Derek says. “So your dad knows we’re together.”

“Derek!” Stiles exclaims. “I was planning on telling him we were just good friends right up until he busted us having sex in the back seat of the Camaro! And probably even after that!”

Derek’s mind blanks on the ‘having sex in the back seat of the Camaro’ honestly. Everything else is static. “You, um, you want us to have sex in the Camaro?” He grimaces. “But also have your dad bust us?”

“I don’t _want_ him to bust us,” Stiles says. “I’m just saying that knowing my luck that’s exactly what will happen. But yes, I definitely want us to have sex in the Camaro, so if you can make a note of that for future reference that would be great.”

“Um,” Derek says, his face burning. “Okay. Yes. I will make a note of that.”

Stiles flashes him a cheeky grin, and Derek knows he loves how easy it is for him to fluster Derek. Derek kind of loves it too. “Good,” said Stiles. “Now why do you have a guitar case?”

Derek crouches down and snaps the clips open. The guitar isn’t anything special. Just some middle-of-the-range acoustic thing he picked up in college and never learned how to play. Derek has always liked the feel of it in his hands though. He crosses to Stiles’s bed and sits down. Sits the guitar in his lap, and pushes the strings down against the fret.

“Come over here,” he says.

Stiles sits beside him, curious and watchful. “Are you going to play me a song, Der?”

“No,” Derek says. “I’m pretty terrible.”

Stiles looks at his phone and laughs.

“Put your hand on it,” Derek says, and reaches out to take Stiles’s hand. He presses it gently against the body, just below the bridge. “There.”

And then he strums the strings softly, and watches Stiles’s face light up as he feels the vibrations through the wood.

“I’m not joking about being terrible,” he says. “You should probably take your hearing aids out.”

Stiles laughs again, and straightens up for a moment. He walks over to his desk and leaves his hearing aids there. Fiddles with them for a moment, and then puts them back in. “No, I want to hear it,”

“Your funeral,” Derek deadpans, and shifts further up onto Stiles’s bed, getting comfortable.

Stiles returns and climbs onto the bed. He curls around Derek and the guitar. He puts his head on Derek’s shoulder, his chest flush with the guitar. “Do it again?”

Derek strums the strings again, with a little more force this time, and Stiles lets out a small noise that somehow seems to encompass both delight and sorrow. It’s bittersweet, Derek thinks, and this might be the first time he’s ever truly understood that word.

It’s bittersweet.

He continues to strum the guitar—God only know what the sheriff is thinking downstairs—and Stiles relaxes against him. His hand shifts from the body of the guitar, over the bridge, to the strings themselves. His fingers rest on them lightly, as though he’s almost afraid to touch. Derek plucks one roughly to send the vibrations down the string.

Stiles lifts his head and smiles at him, his eyes shining. “Wow.”

“You try,” Derek says.

Stiles’s mouth curls into a smile, and he strums at the strings. The sound is even more discordant than anything Derek has produced, but he loves the way that Stiles lights up and laughs.

He loves the way he can give him this.

And he loves the way that when Stiles kisses him he can feel the whole universe tilt and swirl around them. 

***

Not every moment with Stiles is earth-shattering, and that’s fine. Some of Derek’s favourite moments are those quiet times he spends sitting with Stiles on the floor of his bedroom, glowering with frustration while trying to learn new signs.

“Remember how we talked about speech reading and body language?” Stiles asks him one night, nudging Derek with his knee.

Derek nods.

“I mean, your hands say ‘Nice to meet you’ but your face says ‘I’m going to bury you in a shallow grave where your loved ones will never find you.’”

Derek sighs, and rolls his shoulders to try to ease some of the tension in them. “How did you ever learn this?”

Stiles raises his eyebrows. “I was kind of out of options at the time, Der.”

Derek winces. He’s such an idiot.

Stiles pokes him in the ribs. “You’re making your Grumpy Cat face again.”

Derek snorts.

They practice for another half an hour, Derek watching the way Stiles’s long fingers move so effortlessly, so elegantly, before Stiles’s phone lights up with a notification. He grabs it, reads it, and grins.

“Dad says dinner’s ready!”

They head downstairs.

The sheriff is making pasta tonight, and waved off Derek’s earlier offer to help. He’s still on crutches these days, but relies on them less and less. In another week or two he’s hoping to be back at work on restricted duties, although it’ll still be a while before he’s back on the road. Derek doesn’t think anyone at the station will care about that. They just want him back at work. Derek has learned more about the loyalty and the love the deputies of Beacon Hills have for their sheriff in the man’s absence than he did in his presence. They miss him.

It hasn’t been as awkward as Derek thought it would be, being not just John’s deputy, but also his son’s boyfriend. John never did get around to that shovel talk, but then Derek figures John isn’t the sort of man who needs to give one. They all know Stiles is quite capable of seeking his own retribution if Derek wrongs him.

And, Derek hopes, they all know that Derek would never intentionally hurt Stiles.

John turns as Stiles and Derek enter the kitchen. His sharp gaze takes in Stiles’s lack of hearing aids and lack of phone, which he’s left upstairs on charge.

“Set the table for me, Stiles,” John says, signing the words as he speaks them.

“I’m on it,” Stiles says.

“Derek, would you get the drinks?” He signs that too, so that Stiles isn’t left out.

And this is why Derek is learning how to sign. He doesn’t want Stiles to have to rely on his hearing aids or his assistive technology on his phone. Because there are times when Stiles doesn’t want to wear his hearing aids, and times when his phone is left upstairs—though that only happens when he’s with his dad or Derek, Derek has noticed, and that indication of the trust Stiles has in him makes his chest ache—and Derek doesn’t want him to feel shut out in those times. He never wants Stiles to feel shut out when he’s in the same room as Derek.

Stiles sets the table, and Derek carries the drinks over and then returns for the pasta. John might be doing all that he can do, but crutches and hot food are not a good combination. They eat mostly in silence, because signing takes a back seat to eating.

Derek likes nights like these. He likes the slow pace of them. He likes the warm domesticity of them—random notions of vampirism aside—and he likes feeling like he’s a part of a family. Not his family, not quite yet, but some day, he thinks. Some day.

***

“You’re smiling,” Laura says when Derek calls her one Wednesday afternoon.

“This isn’t a video call.”

“I can tell anyway,” Laura says, and she’s right. “I like it, baby bro. It suits you.”

Derek’s smile broadens.

***

Sometimes Derek gets so distracted by the way Stiles’s fingers move that he forgets he’s supposed to be watching what he’s signing, not letting Stiles accidentally hypnotize him.

“Derek!” Stiles exclaims, laughing. “Are you even paying attention?”

Derek might be the worst student in the world, but Stiles doesn’t seem to mind when Derek apologizes with a kiss and then, because it always makes Stiles beam, traces a heart on the palm of his hand. He watches to see that Stiles is making eye contact.

“I didn’t know why I came to Beacon Hills,” he says softly. “I didn’t know what my life was missing, but I knew it was something. And it turned out it was you.”

Stiles doesn’t drop his gaze to his phone. He keeps it fixed on Derek. “It was me?”

“It was you,” Derek confirms.

“Soon you’ll be able to sign that to me,” Stiles says, his mouth quirking.

“Soon,” Derek agrees. “But probably not today.”

Stiles’s smile is soft and fond. “It’s a lot to learn.”

“It’s worth it,” Derek says, and traces another heart on Stiles’s palm.

He thinks of how he thought that Stiles was a rude asshole. And then that Stiles was a little shit who was making fun of him with those apps. But none of those are the Stiles that Derek knows now, the one that Stiles keeps hidden underneath a layer of plaid and sass and sarcasm. The real Stiles is vulnerable, and guards himself closely. The real Stiles is sometimes sweet, and sometimes afraid, and sometimes laughs too loudly because he forgets to modulate his volume. The real Stiles is more than his hearing aids and his headphones and his mobile phone. The real Stiles is soft when he sleeps, and curls up against Derek like a pill bug.

The real Stiles is _also_ still sassy and sarcastic and a smartass, because nobody is just one dimensional, and he talks smack when he kicks Derek’s ass at video games.

The real Stiles is mildly allergic to pineapple, but still eats it because, as he says, it burns so good.

The real Stiles might be an actual idiot, but he’s Derek’s idiot. He fits into all the places in Derek’s life that he hadn’t even known were empty until Stiles was there to fill them.

The real Stiles is someone that Derek can’t imagine living without, now that he knows him.

“One day,” Stiles says now, leaning in to kiss Derek, “you’ll be able to sign _all_ the words.”

“All of them?” Derek asks against his lips.

Stiles checks his phone screen and laughs. “All of them. All of the words in the world.”

“One day,” Derek echoes back to him.

***

Derek doesn’t need to sign all the worlds in the world to Stiles. Just the ones that matter. One day, or, more precisely, one evening almost two years to the day they met, he takes Stiles for a weekend at the house in the Preserve, and they picnic on the overgrown back lawn and laze around in the sunlight. And then, just when the golden afternoon is softening into dusk, Derek takes the ring box out of his pocket and signs: _Marry me?_

One day, not too many months after that, Stiles stands at the altar with him and blinks back tears as Derek recites the vows he wrote himself, his voice stammering a little and his clumsy fingers flubbing some of the signs as he promises to love Stiles forever.

It's the easiest promise in the world to make, and Derek knows he’ll never break it.

One day, while all around them people clap and cheer, everything that Derek ever wanted comes true.


End file.
